The NextBest Thing
by llamaSUPERNOVA
Summary: She's spent her whole life being graded on the sanctity of patience and a dumb appreciation. Andromeda Black.


Annie's eight and Bell's stories are the only constant. On nights and lazy afternoons that Mummy and Father are doing whatever it is adults do and the house elves are too busy with making dinner to pay much notice to anything else, two young girls are found curled up in the corner of the mahogany library, raptly hanging onto every word their sister says of Cinderella's escape from a cruel stepmother and the wondrous strength of Rapunzel's hair.

'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' would have been more appropriate, of course, and they had occupied the imagination of the sisters for a good few years until Bella had uncovered a strange book entitled 'The Brothers Grimm Fairytales' in the depths of their attic. Since then, a morbid fascination with muggle folktales has become the sisters' secret. The stories bring out a part of each girl the others hardly knew was there.

For Bell, it's the hopeless romantic. Now that she's mature enough to have outgrown the pleasure of spying on their parents' galas simply because of the pretty dresses. Now she spends the evenings peering through the railing of the grand stairwell, whispering to Annie which young couples would look well together, and the grand love story that was theirs. Bell's under the impression that a life without love is a life half lived.

Cissa's is the inner cynic. At the age of seven, she's surprised them all by having a superb intellect beneath that white-blonde hair and using it to make constant remarks regarding the irony behind the stories – what's the point of Snow White running away from being the maid of one if she's only going to end up as the maid of seven? These comments put Bell in a right snit. Unlike most other girls of her age, she also decides there's no such thing as true love.

The real irony there is that both Bell and Cissy eventually change their minds.

To her sisters, Annie's just the same as always. In her own mind, she's become a bit of a feminist. She hates that Sleeping Beauty had only to look at her prince to fall in love, and why was it that he got to declare they would be married? And why couldn't she rescue herself? Annie puts up with the stories because, and solely because, they're the only constant.

[_Because I don't care for your fairytales._]

Annie's twelve and Demetrius Selwyn's holding her hand. There's nothing wrong with that because it looks good for her family, even if she's practical enough to know that a relationship at her age could never be taken seriously by any onlooker.

She doesn't know why this bothers her so much. Even though she's long since outgrown 'The Brothers Grimm Fairytales', Annie remembers how trite those romances were, and likes how different her relationship with Demetrius is. It's safe, not assuming.

But why, then, is he holding her hand? And why doesn't she see fireworks when she looks into his eyes, the way Bell told her she surely would? And why is the absence of it so disappointing for her, the closet feminist, so assured in the fact that no romance should be cliché?

Well. It's not like she has to marry him.

[_You're so worried about the maiden, though you know she's only waiting on the next best thing._]

Annie's fourteen and having new revelations every day. Today she's had two.

The first comes in the form of a letter from her mother. These letters are stiff, formal, and – thankfully – infrequent. They are also very blunt, which is why Annie sits in her chair, a forgotten egg dangling precariously from her fork, staring in near disbelief. 'Near' being the word with emphasis, seeing as Annie knows she should have seen this coming.

Her mother, you see, has received intelligence that she and Demetrius Selwyn have ended their relationship and expects her to quickly engage herself in another respectable match, because her mother and father simply have neither time nor patience to seek one out for her.

Maybe that's the reason why she agrees to go to Hogsmeade with that Ravenclaw boy from her Charms class.

Ted's undeniably the most amiable boy she's ever gone on a date with, and Annie quite likes him. They spend an enjoyable few hours in an unremarkable little tea shop laughing about teachers and Bobby Llewellyn's incident with the giant squid, and swapping opinions on radio shows and literary classics. Annie's surprised at how easy it is to talk to him. Ted's also got quite an affinity for music, and she wonders aloud how he could possibly know so many muggle artists.

And thus comes the second revelation.

[_She's only waiting, spent her whole life being graded on the sanctity of patience and a dumb appreciation._]

Annie's sixteen and wishes she had some hard drugs at hand. Or at least an aphrodisiac. She can't believe the turn of events of the last twenty-four hours, that Cissa, her loyal little sister with a love story of her own at hand, could have betrayed her like this.

It would have been one thing if she had quietly confronted her. They could have talked things out. Annie wouldn't have been able to defend Ted's lineage – that was far too heavily engrained in their family to change – but she might have been able to make her see the glamorous side of it, the side that would appeal to her. The secret romance.

Unfortunately, Cissa hasn't given her the opportunity, and now she's watching Bell storm away in a high rage, torn between going to warn Ted and running after her to _make_ her listen. The seconds stretch on as Annie stands there, caught between her two choices and not making a decision. She turns on her heel and runs.

The next morning, Ted's in the hospital wing.

She tries to visit him, but it seems that the entirety of both Ravenclaw and Slytherin House are determined to prevent it. A girl with a blue tie trips her near the door and then says, "Oops," before smirking and running off. She glares at her coldly and then fully intends to continue on to the Infirmary when she notices Cissa.

Annie tries to brush past her without a word, but she grabs her wrist with a surprisingly strong grip.

"It was for your own good," she says matter-of-factly. "That silly infatuation needed to end, and now it has."

For the second time in two days, Annie turns away from her sister and runs.

[_But the story needs some mending and a better happy ending._]

Annie's eighteen and feels deflated as the train pulls into Kings Cross for the last time. She's not the only one of her classmates to be miserable and terrified to be leaving school, but at least they have excitement to throw into the mix of emotions. It's been coming for a long time, but now that adult life is here, the truth of Annie's situation has never seemed more real.

This time last year, Bell had been whisked from the train to the Lestrange manor in order to prepare for her wedding the next week. Now it's Annie's turn. She stares hopelessly out of the window as her friends file out of the compartment, some hugging her cheerfully, some on their way to a similar fate.

She's indifferent to them all.

The compartment's empty now but for herself and, though she wants nothing more than to remain on the Hogwarts Express for the rest of her life, she knows better than to keep her mother waiting. Glancing around the little space for the very last time, Annie stands and finds herself facing Ted, who she never wanted to say goodbye to.

She never had to, and her mother stood waiting on the platform for quite a long time.

[_Because I don't want the next best thing._]


End file.
